John Bauer
The painter of trolls and forests.
John Bauer illustrated Among Gnomes and Trolls with giants, trolls and princesses in deep forests. He died in a shipwreck on Lake Vättern in 1918.
John Bauer was born in 1882 in Jönköping. His father had emigrated from Germany and ran a delicatessen. Even as a child John drew trolls and fairy-tale creatures. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1900 to 1905.
While a student he made a journey to Lapland to illustrate a book and was deeply impressed by Sámi culture and the mountain landscape. In 1906 he married the artist Ester Ellqvist. The couple travelled to Italy, where he studied Renaissance art, and later had a son, Bengt.
From 1907 Bauer illustrated the annual fairy-tale book Among Gnomes and Trolls. His pictures of big, good-natured trolls, little princesses and deep, mossy spruce forests became so popular that today they are the very embodiment of the Swedish fairy tale. Still Tuvstarr Sits Gazing Down into the Water of 1913 is one of his best-known pictures. He often worked in watercolour and gouache with muted earth colours and large dark areas in which the light falls on a single pale figure.
He also wanted to produce monumental painting and worked for several years on large projects, but they were never completed. In his last years he grew tired of the fairy-tale pictures and sought new directions.
In November 1918 the family was to move to Stockholm. They travelled on the steamer Per Brahe across Lake Vättern, but the ship sank in a storm. John, Ester and their son Bengt all drowned. Jönköping County Museum has the largest collection of his works. His trolls have influenced fantasy art and film far beyond Sweden.